Fiscal Federalism and State - Local Government Relations and Development in Nigeria: A Study of Joint Accounts Commission (JAC) of Abia State (2018 - 2022)
Abstract
The increasing decline of the performance of the local government system in its administrative duties as a third tier of the Nigerian federation constitutes a source of concern to all. Such concern arise from the fiscal relations between this tier and others in the federation within which each is duty bound to optimize it's functions. The study argue that intergovernmental relations among the State - Local government relations in 2018 and 2021 were in disarray due to the conflicts over issues of intergovernmental relations, overconcentration of power at the state level among other factors. The study reveals that for cordial relationship between the local government and state government to take place, the constitutional status of local government must be clearly spelt out, the issue of joint state-local government account should be reversed, also there should be direct disbursement of federation allocation to all the levels of government. The study uses structural functionalism theory. The population of the study is the total population of five local government areas selected which is made up of 1,331,082 while the sample size is 400 using Yamani Taro formula. The study gather data through primary and secondary sources using questionnaire and interview to analyze the descriptive, simple statistics and percentage in a tabular format. The study concludes and recommends that State and local government relations we're often bitter and uncooperative in Abia State.
Keywords
Fiscal FederalismStateLocal governmentJoint Accounts CommissionDevelopmentAbia StateNigeria.
References
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